João Maria Pacheco
Folding Field, 2019
Video-performance, color, sound, 7’43’’
PT | ENG
The artist unfolds a piece made by juxtaposed layers of paper, heavy although fragile, whose colors and lines resemble the ones on the floor. He stretches it and hangs it on the wall, an act of unravelling and spreading the field of the work which framed by the camera makes it look as though it expands from the wall to the ground. The line that separates the exterior space that surrounds the piece from the surface it creates, that is, the space of representation, thus fades, allowing for space itself to become a dimension of the artwork.
Following an approach on space and depth in painting, Folding Field focuses on the interaction between body and space, as well as on its relation with landscape. In fact, this piece can be seen as a landscape that has been converted into a personal and portable body, shaped by its continuous folding and unfolding. Though it can be displayed and reframed in other places, this deceptive and flattened scenery seems to coexist with the space in which it is presented during the performance, as if it was adjustable to its environment. No longer confined to one geographic location it is therefore the fact that it is enclosed, by the walls and the camera, that allows it to grow beyond their limits.